No one changes their mind except me. And I don't recall the last time someone apologized or aknowledged for getting something wrong besides me.

It is the same few people who consistently say "hur-dur-dur I'm right" and "that's a LIBERALZ (or just as often, BIGOTED) source" when confronted with overwhelming evidence in the form of controlled studies, statistics, etc, and I'm sick of it.

Seriously, "evolution is a myth propagated by the left"? "Bruce Jenner needs to give others the courage to say they need help"?

Quoting various sources from Daily Kos to even fucking Infowars, then claim anything to the left or right of their own views are " biased"?

I feel I must highlight the following statement in the APA's guidelines:

A person’s identification as [transgender/gender nonconforming] can be healthy and self-affirming, and is not inherently pathological. However, people may experience distress associated with discordance between their gender identity and their body or sex assigned at birth, as well as societal stigma and discrimination

Plus, it's not unheard of that someone will see a point and start on the path to changing their mind. I've admitted wrong a few times on here, and I flatter myself that perhaps I've changed someone else's mind. Who knows?

It's fun to examine your own view, try to analyze why you think it, how to support it. It's a bit of self-enlightenment when done right--even if you completely ignore everyone else. Of course, if you want to do that, I'd suggest a diary instead.

Good old climate change. Almost every course I've taken in college so far has had at least a lecture on climate change so at this point it feels so wrong when people try to deny climate change.

Oh noes what will we ever do with all of that extra world wide rain

I wonder if it could help offset our exploding populations.

Well what if we did cut emissions like they want:

Could be bait, could not be. Whatever, in the event you're just being silly, carry on. Regardless, I can't quite turn a blind eye to a topic that my education has revolved around as a whole. So yeah to all that read what follows, sorry for the wall.

Spoiler Alert! Click to show or hide

To start, the issue with the precipitation diagram is that it depicts a global average. Climate change isn't likely to reduce precipitation or anything like that, in fact some areas may experience more rainfall, like the graph depicts. However, it's important to take into account WHERE the precipitation is occurring. Rain over the Pacific Ocean obviously won't help out inland farming operations (Rain is expected to increase over oceans and decrease inland - though it's been like a year since I took the class discussing that topic so I can't give you an article on that topic). So I would say that no, I doubt the increase in average global rainfall could provide us with better growing conditions to support a larger population (But this is assuming that's what you meant when you linked precipitation and population together, if I missed your point oh well.)

Next I took a look at the front page of that C3headline website and my issue with them is that on their front page, the very first article defends CO2 emissions and its positive relation to forest growth rates.

While it is true that CO2 does increase plants' growth rates, it is only up to a certain level and their article makes no mention of that and only has one cited article supporting their claims. Not a good thing to see when it comes to source credibility.

Credibility issues aside, climate change requires only a minor increase in temperatures to show major changes in the environment. (http://www.o3d.org/eas-4300/lectures-2012/MarineEcosys/Perry-2005-shifts.pdf one one of many peer-reviewed articles discussing the topic).
Another thing that bothers me about your examples is that they don't mention any of the other greenhouse gases or the roles they play like methane. Climate change is more complex than CO2 raising the planet's temperature so I'm likely to discredit any article that makes general statements on the topic.

A fairly relevant note about CO2 is that it acidifies the oceans. The problem with that is that organisms that develop shells like corals and mollusks become less efficient at creating the calcium carbonate required to form said shells. This destabilizes the base of the food chain and can mean the loss of habitat and lots of biodiversity as a result especially in coral reef systems.

To wrap it up, the current issue with climate change is that people think there is less scientific evidence on the topic than there really is. A very minor number of studies refute man-made climate change, and very few studies reject the idea completely. At the end of the day, I'm trying to say that it's more of an issue than people give it credit for and should look past very general pieces of evidence that don't reflect the scientific consensus at all. Also a side note, arguments that bring up ancient atmospheric conditions aren't really valid in the climate change problem. Yes temperatures and CO2 levels were higher in the past, however, current life is adapted to much milder conditions and we're changing the planet faster than evolution can take place for most species.

Just to leave you with an idea on the balance of the current consensus.

Slightly off topic: I think that the term transgenders is stupid. You wouldn't refer to a person with autism as autist, now would you? Not that it matters a lot, but it's a mistake that's made pretty often even though it could easily be avoided. What I'd suggest is using the terms transgender person/people or just trans.

Slightly off topic: I think that the term transgenders is stupid. You wouldn't refer to a person with autism as autist, now would you? Not that it matters a lot, but it's a mistake that's made pretty often even though it could easily be avoided. What I'd suggest is using the terms transgender person/people or just trans.